


follow

by cenli



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-21
Updated: 2015-12-21
Packaged: 2018-05-08 04:15:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5482955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cenli/pseuds/cenli
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And that’s what he draws, what he paints: green fields and grey city skylines and starry nights. Quiet, distant things so different from his everyday life.</p><p>[written for hq winter hols exchange]</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

  * For [virgoxdreamer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/virgoxdreamer/gifts).



> happy holidays, virgoxdreamer!!  
> you asked for artist akaashi and this is something like that--i hope you like it!
> 
>  

Keiji finds solace in pencil pressed to paper, calm in paintbrush bristles leaving pale blues and bright golds across imagined skies, satisfaction in watching rough sketches become smooth pastel-smudged landscapes.

And that’s what he draws, what he paints: green fields and grey city skylines and starry nights. Quiet, distant things so different from his everyday life.

 

“Akaashi! Akaashi, didya see? Did you see me block Konoha’s spike—that was weak, Coconut!”

“I was setting up the other net, Bokuto-san.”

“Then I’ll do it again, wait here—hey, Akaashi?”

Keiji turns, half-exasperated, to see Bokuto staring intently at Keiji’s face. Keiji meets sun-gold eyes and a chill runs up his spine despite himself. He takes a step back, fiddles with the hem of his shirt.

“Yes, Bokuto-san?”

“You have something…”

Bokuto reaches forward to brush a thumb over the apple of Keiji’s cheek, feather soft.

“See! Look!”

Keiji blinks, let’s out the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, tries to focus on the smudge of black that Bokuto is displaying proudly.

“Oh. It’s charcoal, probably.”

Bokuto crosses his arms, pale blue practice jersey pulled tight across broad chest muscles. Keiji blinks again and tries to concentrate on Bokuto’s voice floating out from somewhere above Keiji’s eye level.

“What the heck, Akaashi? You told us not to play with fire!”

Keiji sighs, the tingling in his cheek fading and a mask of familiar mild irritation settling onto his features.

“You and Kuroo-san wanted to set off fireworks in a greenhouse—”

“It was raining, Akaashi! We couldn’t exactly set them off outside.”

“Bokuto-san, that’s not—”

The shrill screech of the coach’s whistle cuts through Keiji’s words and Bokuto bounces off, loudly telling Komi to be ready for spiking practice because “I feel good today! Hey, hey, hey!”

Keiji rubs a palm over his cheek and follows.

 

- 

 

“When did you get into art, Akaashi?”

Keiji starts, nearly drops the English book he’d been reading on his usually-quiet walk home.

“What?”

“The charcoal, right? It wasn’t from a fire, was it?”

Bokuto still looks a little hopeful, eyes bright and nose pink over his loosely-wrapped school scarf, and Keiji smiles a little ruefully.

“No, it wasn’t from a fire. Or, at least, not from a fire that I was involved with.”

Bokuto wilts a little, but pulls himself up and shoves his hands into charcoal-grey school blazer pockets.

“So you’re an artist, huh? It makes sense, you’ve got that whole mysterious thing about you.”

“I do?”

“Yeah! I figured you had a secret of some kind, but I was hoping it was something cool—like a spy! Or a government agent!”

“Why would they need to spy on a high school, Bokuto-san?”

Bokuto leans in close, wiggles his eyebrows.

“Who’s this ‘they,’ Akaashi, huh? Do you know something you’re not telling me?”

Keiji leans forward so his nose is scant inches from Bokuto’s, voice as deadpan as possible, his lips tugging upwards despite themselves.

“I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you.”

Bokuto leans back and lets out a bark of laughter, loosens his scarf with an ungloved finger.

“You wouldn’t actually, I don’t think… Boba! Let’s get boba!”

“Is that why you’re following me home? Isn’t your house in completely the other direction?”

“Yeah! Of course! I’m treating my favourite setter to boba—black tea with honey, right?”

Bokuto picks up his pace, puffs of frozen breath following him into the steamed up windows of a small café on the side of the street.

Keiji cocks his head, then dog-ears the page of his book and follows.

 

-

 

“Akaaashi!”

“What are you doing in the second-year wing, Bokuto-san?”

“Finding you, of course! What do you draw, Akaashi? Can I see? I bet you’re really good!”

“Why would you think that?”

“’Cause you’re good at everything.”

Keiji feels warmth sunrise in his stomach, reaches hesitant fingers to straighten the end of Bokuto’s sea-blue school tie.

“That’s not true.”

 

-

 

Keiji goes home alone. He wears his scarf looser than usual and feels a warm gust of air from the boba café as he walks past, murmurs a greeting when he enters the tall blue house at the end of a warmly-lit street in one of Tokyo’s rare quiet oases.

At the bottom of a bookshelf spanning almost an entire wall of his bedroom, Keiji finds a stack of identical leather-bound sketchbooks. He opens to a page in the bottommost one and finds rough pencil lines showing a simple city skyline—not exactly Tokyo, but not entirely unfamiliar. Rows upon rows of identical grey windows and badly shaded plant boxes, a date marking sometime in junior high; Keiji smiles, skims a finger over the surface.

More recent sketchbooks are colours: buildings scraping peach skies, shadows stretching to pinpoints, cream clouds rolling over pale-green grass dotted red with poppies. Never any people, or close-ups of any kind, and always far enough away that everything is smooth and blurred and quiet.

“You’ve improved a lot,” comes a warm voice from the doorway and Keiji starts, spinning to find his mother leaning against the frame, navy-blue business suit crisp and eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m glad you got your father’s creativity. I can’t even draw a stick figure.”

“That’s not true, kaa-san.”

“Ah, then let’s pair up next time we play Pictionary and see, shall we?” His mother’s smile is warm and full when she pulls away from the door. “Dinner’s almost ready, get cleaned up.”

“I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

The door clicks shut and Keiji rummages through his schoolbag to find his current sketchbook, identical to the others save for a tiny volleyball sticker that Bokuto had stuck to his cheek during a team meeting at the beginning of the year.

More buildings; a pine tree-dotted hill; Mt Fuji against a sunrise;  a silhouette that looks faintly like Fukurodani against a cloud-grey sky, flashes of blue that could be students in windows or shadows from sun peeking out from behind clouds.

He turns to an empty page, picks up a pencil, stares blankly at creamy whorled paper until a shout from downstairs calls him to dinner.

 

-

 

Bokuto fiddles with the hem of his coat, breath puffing out faster than it should when it’s already been twenty minutes since they’d gotten out of practice. Keiji huddles into his coat and waits, blinking snowflakes off his eyelashes.

“So, uh, now that you’re into art, are you…” Bokuto’s voice is muffled by his scarf, eyes downcast, even his hair drooping in the cold.

“Am I…?”

Bokuto scuffs his shoes in freshly-fallen snow, takes a deep breath.

“Are you going to quit volleyball?”

“What? Of course not.” Keiji frowns. “That’s why you’ve been moping all day? You thought I was quitting volleyball?”

“Nationals is in a few months! We can’t lose our star setter!”

“I’ve been drawing since I was eleven, Bokuto-san. Longer than I’ve been playing volleyball. I’m not quitting anything.”

“Oh.” Bokuto huffs out a breath, then furrows his brow. “Well, you could have told me. We could have been going to museums, or art galleries!”

Keiji thinks of Bokuto stuck inside an art gallery trying to puzzle through a Picasso exhibit and holds back a shudder.

“I’d rather just get boba with you—or maybe coffee, now that it’s this cold.”

Bokuto brightens, all sunshine-smiles against a snowy backdrop.

“Let’s go, then!”

“What, now?”

Bokuto spins to beam at Keiji, snow sticking in his hair and eyes bright.

“Every time you want to!”

Keiji stills, bites his cheek to hide a smile, and follows.  

  

-

 

“Ducks wouldn’t be able to play volleyball anyway—they’d just fly over to the ball, which is basically cheating.”

“Basically.”

“And the ball’s too big, unless they make duck-sized volleyballs? Maybe ping pong—oh! Akaashi! They have cheesecake here, let’s get that!”

“With blueberries?”

“And whipped cream!”

“Of course.”

 

 

“Kuroo says that Karasuno’s captain challenged him to online Scrabble. Why would you play Scrabble online? And why didn’t he ask me to play online Scrabble—”

“Hey, Bokuto-san?”

“Huh?”

“You have something…”

Keiji reaches forward, brushes a thumb across the corner of Bokuto’s mouth, and Bokuto sucks in a breath.

“See? Look.”

Keiji holds up his thumb, a dot of white on the tip, and Bokuto blinks him into focus.

“Oh, whipped cream, probably.”

“Probably.”

Keiji winds a scarf loosely around his neck, then smiles down at a peach-pink Bokuto and heads toward the door of the café.

“Let’s go look for some ducks.”

Bokuto laughs, jumps to his feet and follows.

 

-

 

Keiji drapes his coat over the back of his chair, drops his schoolbag on his bed and rummages until he finds his sketchbook.

He turns to a blank page and instinctively smooths it down, reaches for a familiar pencil, thinks of pale blue school uniforms and bright gold eyes.

 

 

 

 


End file.
